groups of three men each would take care of the apartments. Four more would

groups of three men each would take care of the apartments. Four more would remain outside to deal with the concierges or security guards or any other interference, and to command and co-ordinate. We’d leave the same way we came in, by sea. Dado nodded. I found out later that he’d asked the same question of Manno, who had proposed a classic regular-army raid. They would block the road with ten armed paratroopers on each end with the aim of holding off resistance, while another two dozen went in to the apartments and attacked. I could only assume Dado concluded that this almost certainly wouldn’t work, at least not without major trouble. It would certainly forfeit any chance of surprise. “The mission is yours,” he said. “Manno will be in overall command, offshore. Because we’re also planning to hit several other targets.” The reason for the urgent summons was that the Mossad had confirmed all three Palestinians would be in their apartments in 10 days’ time. Everyone involved realized that — given its complexity, the obvious risks, and the inevitable unknowns — the operation could well go wrong. In fact, one reason for Dado’s “other targets” was to ensure that if it did, there would be successes elsewhere to provide a credible justification for having sent Israeli forces into Beirut. As we received further intelligence, new obstacles had to be factored in. The main one was the presence of a gendarmerie, a Lebanese police post, at the bottom end of the street, only 500 feet or so from the apartments. And we would be operating in a crowded, up-market residential area. We could only hope that at the hour we struck, most people would be in bed. Or out partying. This was, after all, pre-civil war Beirut, the “Paris of the Middle East’. In the years since, an extraordinary array of stories has grown up around the sayeret’s final and best-known mission during my term as commander, culminating in the dramatic version in Stephen Spielberg’s movie Munich. | remember reading in one earlier book, otherwise surprisingly accurate, about our five weeks of intensive training. Even the full 10 days which I thought we’d been given would have been a bonus. In fact, we had half that as a full team, since our Mossad drivers, European-born Israelis, had to make their way through Paris to Beirut as tourists, rent the cars and scout out our route from the seashore to Rue Verdun. There were four other operations planned alongside ours: three by paratroop units and one by the Shayetet 13 SEALs, against a series of Fatah and Democratic Front installations. Though all of them, like ours, would need help 136 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011607